Fault management in an optical network is challenging procedure because of the complexity of the optical layer. Most prior art methods of fault management in optical networks are usually limited to detecting faulty communication links and nodes, which, in turn, leads to either replacing the faulty communication link or taking the faulty node out of service, and accordingly impacting network services.
Existing prior art methods of fault detection in optical networks lack the ability to determine whether the detected faults are indicative of one specific problem or a symptom of another problem, and hence, multiple faults may need to be detected and correlated in order to identify a particular problem, which causes these faults.
Consequently, there is a need in the industry to provide an improved methods and apparatus for detecting and correlating faults in optical networks.